28 MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. [Jan. 19, 
the genus: a fine female specimen from Dahuria in the St. Petersburg 
Museum has the fore wings almost free from white scales and the 
cell yellowish. I possess two females from the Amur which have a 
faint yellow tinge all over the white parts of the wings, as is some- 
times seen in very fresh Alpine and Himalayan specimens. I think 
this fades very soon after the insect emerges from the chrysalis. 
Some specimens have two or three of the black spots on fore wing 
pupilled with red, as in typical P. delius. The ocelli of the hind wing 
are sometimes with and sometimes without white pupils, but I have 
seen no specimen which cannot be at once recognized as P. nomion. 
Of the habits and life-history of this species we know nothing at 
present ; but it does not seem to be a high-mountain insect, but rather 
an inhabitant of wooded hilly regions, here it flies in July. 
Schaufuss, in a publication called ‘Numquam Otiosus,’ ‘published 
at Dresden in 1877, on pp. 417-424, after describing two varieties of 
P. nomion under the names of venusi and virgo, attempts to make an 
analytical table of the genus Parnassius ; but this, depending alone 
on such variable characters as the colours and pattern of the wings, 
results in an unnatural and unreliable arrangement of the genus, in 
which no attention whatever is given to structural characters. 
The publication of such papers is in my opinion of no advantage 
to science. As the number of recognized entomological journals is 
already too great, and the difficulty of reference to such a one as 
this almost insuperable to foreigners, one has at least a right to 
expect that after so much trouble as these references give, some- 
thing worth notice should be found. Short papers of no value are 
becoming too numerous. 
P. actius. 
Parnassius actius, Eversmann, Bull. Mosc. 1843, iii. p. 540, t. ix. 
figs. 2a, 6; Staudinger, Stett. ent. Zeit. 1881, p. 278; Alpheraky, 
Lep. Kuldja, p. 23 (1881). 
Var. rhodius, Honrath, Berl. ent. Zeit. 1882, p. 178, t. ii. fig. 6 
1885, p. 274. 
This is a very puzzling species to assign to its proper position in 
the classification of the genus ; for though it undoubtedly appears 
to have minor characters which entitle it to be recognized as a species 
in the high mountains of Northern and Eastern Turkestan, yet I 
cannot specify any by which it can be constantly distinguished from 
P. discobolus ; and the form which has been described as rhodius is 
so like the corresponding sex of P. jacquemonti, that I am unable to 
distinguish between them in the male sex, and do not know for certain 
whether P. actius exists at all in Ladak or the Himalayas, whence no 
female corresponding to it with a keeled pouch has yet come under my 
notice. Itis, however, distinct from the form I have called himalay- 
ensis, of which a large series constantly differs in the greater blackness 
of the antenne, which, though ringed, are in many cases almost 
entirely black, whilst in P. aetius from Turkestan, in P. yacquemonii, 
and P. discobolus they are, as far as my specimens go, always 
distinctly ringed with white. On the underside it perfectly agrees 
